The invention relates to a serial printer for electronic table computers and the like, the printer being of a kind having a type carrier movable step-by-step parallel to a movable platen.
Serial printers of a known type, which are used for typing the values fed into a computer or the results of these calculations, are, generally, motor-driven. As a result, a relatively high mechanical expenditure for the drive of the type-selection, the advance of the carriage carrying the type carrier, the printing movement, etc. will be necessary. Such printers can have about 500 individual parts, so that both the production costs of such a large number of parts as well as the costs for their assemblage are high. Furthermore, the entire mechanism is sensitive to breakdowns, and subject to noise and considerable wear. Beyond that, the writing speed of such printers is limited to an unsatisfactorily low value, because of the complicated transmission mechanism and because of the fact that the selection control of the types must always start out from a base position.
It is an object of the present invention to minimize or obviate problems of these types.
It is another object of the invention to improve a serial printer of the initially-described type in such a way that the number of individual parts will be decreased to a fraction, enabling the parts to become much more simplified.
It is a further object to enable the printer to operate more quickly and noiselessly, be largely free of maintenance, and show the least possible wear of the moving parts.
It is yet another object to enable the values emitted from a table calculator in the binary system, without conversion, to be addressed directly as control commands for the selection of type indicia.